Three more Rafale fighter jets take off from France for IAF airbase

With three more fighters joining the IAF, the total numbers of Rafale fighter jets in Ambala will reach 20 with another four expected to join within a fortnight from France.

Updated on: May 5, 2021, 16:30:35 IST

By Shishir Gupta, New Delhi

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Three more Rafale omnirole fighters are on their way to India from Merignac-Bordeaux airbase in France and are scheduled to land in Jamnagar airbase later on Wednesday evening. The three fighters will then fly to Ambala before they are repurposed to Hashimara airbase in north Bengal later.

French manufacturer Dassault is expected to deliver all the 36 Rafale fighter jets within this year (HT photo)

The aircraft will be refueled en-route by India's strategic ally United Arab Emirates using Airbus 330 multi-role transport tankers over middleeast skies.

ALSO READ: IAF set to lease A330 mid-air refueller from France for training

With three more fighters joining the Indian Air Force (IAF), the total numbers of Rafale fighter jets in Ambala will reach 20 with another four expected to join within a fortnight from France. The process of induction of Rafale jets has become tedious during the coronavirus pandemic with the IAF pilots having to undergo complete quarantine in France before being cleared to fly back to India. The IAF is currently using seven Rafales to train the pilots in France.

While the Golden Arrows squadron in Ambala has 18 fighters with state of the art weapons and missiles, the remaining planes, perhaps six, will form the second squadron in Hashimara airbase. Sitting on the mouth of Silliguri corridor, Hashimara airbase will add teeth to the entire eastern sector against the Chinese Air Force. The airbase is currently being overhauled to become the second home of Rafale fighters.

ALSO READ: Rafale weaponry prompts China, Pak to alter defence posture

While French manufacturer Dassault will deliver all the 36 Rafales by latter half of the year, the IAF is in a state of preparedness as the disengagement and de-escalation plan with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in eastern Ladakh is still not complete as the Chinese army is not willing to restore status quo ante in Gogra-Hot Springs sector along the Line of Actual Control in Ladakh.

This is a matter of serious military concern as the Indian Army continues to remain deployed in the area and is monitoring Chinese Army movements.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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